Counterfeiter: How a Norwegian Jew Survived the Holocaust

In 1940, the Nazis set usecret project inmotion, Operation Bernhard. In 1942, men with certain skills were selected from the concentration, even from those on their way to the gas chambers. The men were transffered to the strictly isolated Block 19 in Sachsenhausen concentrationcamp The prisoners were presented with an normous task: producing counterfeit British bank notes to the value of hundreds of millions of pounds. The notes, considered some of the most perfect counterfeits ever produced, were to be dropped from planes over London to destabilize the British economy. Later in the war, the operation widened to include American dollar bills. One of the men plucked from Auschwitz was a norwegian Jew, Moritz Nachstern. Thi sis his shocking story from his arrest in Oslo, the journey to Germany, the horrors of the camps, and the impossibility of life in Block 19; the prisoners had to prooduce exquisite forgeries, but as slowly as they could, to ensure their own safety for as long as possible.